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Definition of handspan in English:

handspan

noun

The maximum distance between the tips of the thumb and little finger, taken as the basis of a measurement equal to 9 inches.

‘the boat was hardly more than a handspan above the waterline’

‘He held out an arm to show how the end of the sleeve hung two handspans below his knuckles.’

‘‘That was Matthew's race,’ said Grobler after Pinsent, Cracknell, Coode and Williams had beaten the Canadians by a handspan.’

‘It's about a handspan as far as wings, it's orangey, and it has dark markings on its wings.’

‘The guard was also a few handspans thicker and had quite the menacing expression.’

‘He once again kept up the flow of meaningless but soothing chatter as his hands passed over every handspan of the glossy hide.’

‘Eiji Sanjuro was about a handspan shorter than Gabriel, but was built like a bamboo stalk, tough, slender, and powerful.’

‘Lang's handspan covers 12 notes on the piano keyboard.’

‘But what it didn't have in width, it had in height, being about three hundred handspans high filled to the brim with books.’

‘Ours are longer by a handspan, sometimes a hand's length.’

‘The skull was almost a handspan wide, the pike's six rows of curving, pointed teeth distinct, as were the teeth that cover the upper surface of its tongue like barbs.’

‘Use your hand span to measure the distance around a tree trunk.’

‘Now, the elephant on your desk fits your fist with a handspan's room around, but is perhaps a thousand times as responsive as Engelbart's original, with a different function keyed to each finger and divided further by context.’

‘A good rule of thumb when buying or constructing a flight cage for large parrots is that the width should be twice the wingspan, plus a handspan.’

‘Why is a large hand span a useful human adaptation?’

‘It's body was partly obscured by two large wings, each as wide as Peter's handspan, which seemed to be a sort of dappled brown-yellow colour, speckled with rich blood reds and blackberry purples about the jagged edges.’